


Lost Footage

by itslikegodspilledaperson



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4028146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itslikegodspilledaperson/pseuds/itslikegodspilledaperson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff stumbles across something he wasn't supposed to and immidiately assumes the worst... Post 6x12</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Footage

Abed scrambled around their apartment frantically, tearing books from shelves, opening and closing cabinets, and looking on, in, or under everything imaginable. 

“No, no, no, no, no….” He muttered to himself as the fruitless search continued. 

Eventually the raucous must’ve been enough to stir Annie from her sleep, as she burst from her room , hair tied in a loose bun, wearing a baggy “Glee” T-Shirt, gym shorts, and an expression that could probably have murdered her roommate based on look alone. 

“Abed! What the hell are you doing?? It’s 3 in the morning!”

He looked up from his crouched stance on the floor, a half-rolled up rug next to him as he searched the wooden floor beneath. 

“It’s gone. The DVD… it disappeared. It was here when I checked this afternoon and it disappeared... I checked everywhere, even under Britta”, he gestured to their blonde roommate, fast asleep on the couch. 

Annie’s eyes widened, “Abed, she’s asleep! That’s rude!”

“Annie, we both know she’s passed out, not asleep. An airhorn plugged into an amplifier couldn’t wake her up at this point.”

It was true. Her, Jeff, Frankie, Elroy, and Annie had been out on the town, and somewhere along the way found a bar named O’Halligans who had a genius idea to serve shots for a nickel. Nickel Shot Night, they called it. Economically, it was a great idea. However, a dollar had gone more than a long way for Britta, even longer than her subsequent trips to the bathroom. 

By midnight, they had been kicked out. Frankie and Elroy carpooled home, while Jeff and Annie shepherded their inebriated friend back to the apartment. Abed had been out with Rachel, who had returned from Colorado State for the weekend and thus hadn’t joined them. He had just gotten home.

Annie, still frustrated that Abed had awoken her at this untimely hour, calmed down a bit before addressing him again. Antagonizing Abed wouldn’t help anybody. She took a deep breath.

“Okay, Abed. Let’s just take a breather. What DVD?” 

“The blue one. I swear it was sitting on the bookcase when Rachel and I left for our date…”

A look of relief swept across Annie’s face as if she had solved everything after hearing Abed’s last sentence. 

“Oh, you mean the wedding DVD?” she said nonchalantly, “I gave it to Jeff when he and I brought Princess Plastered home.”

Abed’s eyes shot open, suddenly making Annie feel like maybe this hadn’t been as straightforward as she had thought. 

“You WHAT?”

“Yeah,” she answered a lot less sure of herself now. “He asked to borrow it, and I figured what the hell since you made 2 copies anyways…”

Abed eyed her as if she’d just proclaimed that the prequels were better films than the originals.

“Annie, I made only one copy of the wedding video…”

“No, you made TWO, one on the blue DVD and one on the red…” She walked over to the shelf and picked up said red CD. Abed fervently shook his head no.

“The red CD is the only copy of the wedding video. Trust me.”

Annie’s face turned puzzled as she found herself suddenly back at square one. 

Abed’s head fell to his hands, as he got up and paced the room fervently while simultaneously looking for his car keys.

“Oh no, this is bad. This is very, very bad…”

Annie was genuinely worried too, but still not 100% positive on what she was supposed to be worried about exactly.

“Abed… What was on that blue DVD?”

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

“If you don’t put that thing away… I swear, I’m going to stop loving you.”

He sat on his couch in the middle of the apartment, glass of scotch in hand as he watched the DVD play on repeat. It was Annie and Abed. I’m going to stop loving you, he thought to himself. She LOVED him? No, it was impossible. But then again, was it? They’d been living together since 2011, and together alone for a giant portion of that as well. 

It was entirely possible, perhaps more possible than he was willing to admit. 

He had a hard time swallowing just how damn beautiful she was too; Almost hauntingly so, in this video. He thought he’d seen her at her best before, but this was a whole new ballgame and he was having trouble wrapping his head around it. And she was so damn AFFECTIONATE. Good for them, he thought, more of a survival thought than a sincere one as he downed the rest of his drink. He reached for the bottle of scotch on the coffee table, only to find that the cheap plastic bottled he’d bought from the 7-11 down the street was empty. He plopped back on the couch, resting his head back as his glass fell to the floor, spilling backwash and ice cubes over his brand new carpet. 

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Abed and Annie burst into his apartment minutes later to find him passed out in front of the still-looping video. Abed ran over to the DVD player, ejecting the disk and smashing it on the ground.

“I knew I should’ve just deleted that footage, it was just calling for trouble,” he lamented.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it Abed, we were just doing a trope and it got carried away,” Annie reassured him as he picked up the ice cubes and glass off the ground while   
soaking the spillage up with some paper towels. She saw the bottle of scotch on the table out of the corner of her eye while stepping on the towels with her foot.

“Plastic bottle? Ice cubes? That seems a little too… ‘poor college kid’ for Jeff, wouldn’t you say Abed?”

He looked up from his re-enactment of the printer destruction scene from Office Space. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean for a scotch aficionado who resents ice cubes, doesn’t drinking cheap scotch seem a little…off?”

Abed tilted his head as his faraway gaze suddenly snapped back to reality.

“It is a bit out of character now that you mention it, plus his love for neat expensive scotch has been confirmed as canon multiple times throughout the series.” Annie grabbed the bottle and walked over to the garbage can in Jeff’s kitchen, opening it up and gasping at the contents inside. Abed rushed over. 

Inside his trash can were exclusively empty bottles of scotch, all cheap, all in plastic. Mixed in were receipts, which after closer inspection, were dated only a few days before today. Suddenly they began to look at Jeff’s apartment a bit differently than they had just a few moments before. It was a bit messier than he kept it usually, not that they’d know because none of them had seen the inside of his apartment since the Christmas party a few years ago. Empty glasses with rings of golden liquid at the bottom littered his sink and counter, there were some empty takeout boxes of restaurants Jeff wouldn’t be caught dead at scattered here and there, and in his bathroom, his toiletries were strewn across the counter instead of safely locked away in his safe under the sink. 

“Abed you don’t think-“

“That Jeff has a problem? I wish I could lie but despite my calm demeanor I’m freaking out a little bit on the inside. Usually I’d be ecstatic that one of our main characters was facing a hardship like this just for the sake of the arc, but this… this is something way worse than that. This feels more like ‘Main Character being written off’ than ‘end of season character arc’.” 

Annie felt tears well up in her eyes as she looked at the broken cd at the other corner of the room. “Abed, do you think this is… because of me?”

Abed did his best to keep his poker face but even he was having trouble with it right now. 

“I wouldn’t doubt it. We all have known he’s loved you since the finale last year but after his maturity in Season 5 we figured he’d confront his feelings for you. This was a plot twist no one saw coming. Someone in the writer’s room is extremely sadistic,” he surmised grimly. 

That was all Annie needed to burst into tears as she fell into Abed’s arms bawling her eyes out. He did his best to be comforting but even after all this time it was hard for him. 

Annie eventually let go as she sniffled away her remaining tears. “I should stay with him tonight. You know, to help him.”

He shook his head no. “Annie, that’d be the worst thing for him. And for you. You’re going to continue to blame yourself, and he’s going to tell you not to. And if we all know you like we think we do, all that will do is make you blame yourself more.”

He was right unfortunately, and she knew it. So instead, Abed pulled out his phone and called the Committee members one by one. 

“Abed what are you doing?”

He put his phone on his shoulder and looked over to her. 

“We’re intervening. This isn’t just your problem or Jeff’s problem or even my problem. It’s the group’s problem.”


End file.
